World of Paint

If Jackson Pollock hadn't fathered abstract expressionism, what would today's art world look like? That's a question Perrin McEwen has spent some time contemplating ®C not that he wants a definitive answer. "I don't think our world would be possible," McEwen says. "He forced us to look at art in a different way."

For those who see Pollock's pieces as nothing but splatters, the artist might not seem so impactful. But McEwen, who serves as a docent at SMoCA, says that Pollock's fascinations with Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Native American art were manifested on his introspective canvases. "He felt like his work expressed the deep subconscious meanings of this life," McEwen says of Pollack's pioneering approach. He'll discuss why Pollack's work is inseparable from contemporary art during "Jackson Pollock: A Life of Show and Tell, Give and Take."